Bingo!
This is an exclamation often uttered when success has been achieved after fruitless hours of toil. For example, a domestic device has stopped working. It’s something that is used every day, a simple appliance that has always been reliable, never given a moment’s trouble. Everything has been attempted to try and sort out the problem. The book of words associated with the machine has been consulted, the internet has been trawled, and all in vain, until someone suggests, ‘Have you tried switching it off and on again?’
Hope lights the tired eyes and the switch is duly depressed or flicked or the plug is unplugged and plugged back in. That doesn’t work and gloom descends once more until someone else says, ‘Perhaps it needs a new battery’, the new battery or batteries are put in place and Bingo! it works again. (Note: this only succeeds if the appliance in question needs batteries to make it function. Do not search for batteries in contraptions that don’t require batteries – that way madness lies.)
Early British slang records Bingo as “a customs officers’ term, the triumphal cry being employed on a successful search.”
The game of bingo is thought to have its origins in 16th century Italy as a lottery game called, ‘Il Gioco del Lotto d’Italia.’ From there it made its way to France and was called ‘Le Lotto’, where it was played by French aristocrats. Louis XIV himself may have played it, jubilantly crying, ‘Maison’ when he achieved a full house.
By the 18th century it was established in Great Britain and the rest of Europe. Today, bingo venues can be found in most communities, the lure of winning a money prize attracting many to its doors. As a form of gambling it seems fairly innocuous, with relatively small winnings. At least, that was my impression, but when I looked more closely, I discovered it is possible to win millions. Bingo is now big business online, no longer confined to village halls and former cinemas, with hosts calling all the old favourites – legs eleven, key of the door, two little ducks, clickety-click and so on. Perhaps another layer of innocence and simple pleasure has been pared back, even laid waste, to commercialism.
This is the Bingo with which I am
familiar. Please sing along! I can almost guarantee it will sit in your ears
all day.
